O’Shannon Burns

O’Shannon Burns is a researcher and sustainability consultant with more than 15 years of experience shaping mission-driven businesses and embedding regenerative principles into operations with a focus on travel, tourism, climate action, conservation, and environmental justice.

As Program Director of Cornell University’s Sustainable Tourism Asset Management Program at the SC Johnson College of Business, O’Shannon has focused on tourism development and management in Puerto Rico, conservation and tourism policy in Rwanda, and co-developing a framework for sustainable tourism destination management that now underpins the online, self-paced eCornell course on Sustainable Tourism Destination Management. This applied work serves to incubate data-driven methods for tourism destination management including tools to implement climate action planning, document and monitor natural capital, improve land-use planning, engage with local communities, and manage public-private partnerships.

Previously, O’Shannon spent a decade at National Geographic collaborating with explorers as they conducted field work, spearheading sustainability initiatives, and operating exploratory educational travel experiences on all seven continents. While there, she created and was then appointed to National Geographic Partners’ first full-time sustainability position, overseeing sustainability for the company’s travel business and serving as an internal sustainability leader and expert.

O’Shannon leads Ochre, a consulting practice that collaborates with organizations to create custom sustainability strategies and build the systems and programs needed to operationalize sustainability into their work. Ochre has supported The World Bank, Disney, the National Geographic Society, Regenerative Travel, and dozens of small businesses. In the tourism sector, O’Shannon has worked directly with tour operators, destination management companies (DMC’s), hotels, and destination marketing organizations (DMO’s) to implement sustainability frameworks. She is also part of Aurora Collective, which creates intentional collaborations to activate systems change around climate issues.

O’Shannon holds a master’s degree in Sustainability from Harvard University, a bachelor of science in Physical Geography with a focus on Climate Science from the Pennsylvania State University, and an executive certificate in Training and Facilitation from Georgetown University.